“There are just volumes of data being created every day, because so many of our activities are becoming digital,” William Regli, a Drexel University computer science professor, told the Dayton Daily News.
Google, for example, gets more than 2 million search queries every minute, according to Investors Business Daily. And each minute, 100,000 Twitter users post comments and nearly 300,000 Facebook users log on.
Much of big data focuses on tracking Internet usage. When you search for a product on Google or Amazon, or post a comment about a product on Twitter, software tools help businesses mine that data to craft targeted promotions or look “at what types of customers are buying what types of products,” said Kendall Goodrich, an assistant professor of marketing at Wright State University.
That’s where “data analytics” — and companies like Teradata — come in.
Mining data is why the company exists. Teradata was born in the late 1970s in California as a designer of a sophisticated database management system. NCR Corp. — then based in Dayton and owned by AT&T — acquired Teradata in late 1991, but spun it off as a publicly traded independent company in 2007.
“From the very first day, Teradata was designed to be an analytical database provider,” said Bruce Langos, Teradata’s chief operating officer, who is based at the company’s Miami Twp. headquarters.
David Salisbury, a University of Dayton associate professor of MIS (management information systems), said Teradata is on a short list of “business intelligence” giants, the likes of which include IBM, Oracle and Microsoft.
“You won’t get into a lot of trouble arguing that they (Teradata) are near the top,” Salisbury said.
And Teradata is growing. Last week, for example, Teradata and one of its companies, Aprimo, said they completed their acquisition of eCircle, a European specialist in digital marketing. Teradata said it can combine its analytical prowess, Aprimo’s marketing services and eCircle’s digital messaging to help marketers “grow existing customers, attract new customers and increase revenues.”
Teradata reported 2011 profits of nearly $400 million on revenue of $2.3 billion.
In early May,Teradata (NYSE: TDC) saw its stock price jump to new highs when it reported a 40 percent rise in earnings for the first quarter of 2012. Teradata’s shares were trading at $68.90 on Friday afternoon.
Teradata is growing at the rate of more than one new customer and data warehouse installation per week. But Teradata’s business growth will not always equate to more local jobs, because much of the company’s business is outside the U.S., Langos said. Teradata has about 450 local employees and about 9,000 globally.
“Our Dayton employee roles are in finance, legal, operations, human resources, and marketing — and are at optimum levels now,” he said. “No one is happier than Dayton employees with our healthy business growth, and they contribute to it significantly.”
But there is a growing demand for big data workers. According to a New York Times citation of a McKinsey Global Institute report last year, America will need 140,000 to 190,000 more workers with analytical expertise and 1.5 million more managers. And the Times said last week that software producer Cloudera is training 1,500 people a month in database work.
Langos said universities should build data management programs, and he said Teradata has collaborated with Wright State.
Derrick Wood, an equity analyst with Susquehanna International Group who follows Teradata, said the company positioned itself well with its 2011 purchase of Aster Data Systems Inc., a leading name in big data analytics.
Today, Teradata has tools for structured and unstructured data analysis, and even if big data doesn’t endure as a going concern, the company can fall back on its core platform for transactional analytics, Wood said.
“If there’s anything negative, their software is expensive,” Wood said. “(But) that’s not a negative from their point of view.”
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